Humanitarianism is indefensible. This is what the bureaucrats in Geneva and New York fret about today. That in itself is not too serious. What is serious is that humanitarianism has become morally and spiritually indefensible. This discourse on humanitarianism has been murmuring in the background for many decades. But today, claims that it has failed, that it is a fraud, that its dreams of compassion across borders are naïve, even dead, have turned those murmurs into screams. Amplified by mass media economies of attention, refracted through digital platforms, and entangled with technological infrastructures of surveillance and algorithmic governance, humanitarianism now circulates within a regime that both exposes and commodifies suffering. At the same time, genocides are being livestreamed, late-capitalist predation is consuming our humanity, and states everywhere retreat into their atavistic pasts. Within this context, the future of humanitarianism has never been more uncertain.
As part of its research, HUD has co-edited a collection of essays on the future of humanitarianism at e-flux architecture, a leading publishing platform and archive, artist project, and curatorial outlet. The essays explore a diverse range of themes including social media in humanitarian action, conceptualizations of ‘risk’ in designing humanitarianism, non-human forms of humanitarian action, and much more. The contributors span humanitarian professionals, architects, social scientists, artists, and others – all exploring the past, present, and future of humanitarian action from their own perspectives. The series will continue with a further ten essays to be published in 2026, following the launch of HUD’s public exhibition. You can access the individual contributions below, or the entire series via this link.
Details:
Humanitarianism is a collaboration between e-flux Architecture and The Future of Humanitarian Design, a research project of the Geneva Graduate Institute, the University of Copenhagen, the Department of Interior Architecture at HEAD – Genève, and the EssentialTech Lab at EPFL Lausanne, funded by FNS Sinergia.
Editors:
Jonathan Luke Austin, Nick Axel, Javier Fernández Contreras, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anna Leander.
Contributors:
- Margie Cheesman and Claudia Aradau Technosocial Reproduction and Humanitarian Reason
- Foundation for Achieving Seamless Territory (FAST) Nomadic Cultures Amidst Forced Displacement
- Javier Fernández Contreras and Damien Greder Architecture, Humanitarianism, and Social Media
- Benjamin Meiches Animal Minds, Humanitarian Designs: Interventions with Nonhuman Others
- Rachel Howell and Grégoire Castella Paths to Scale
- Jonathan Luke Austin and Maevia Griffiths How to Stop Killing People
- Irit Katz Gaza, Stripped: Displacement, Destruction, and Necro-Humanitarianism
- Jacob Burns Constructing the Risk Threshold
- Nora Doukkali, Anna Leander and Silke Oldenburg Humanitarians on Hold: Cruel Optimism and Rhythmic Objects of Care
- Andrew Herscher and Daniel Bertrand Monk #inhumanitarianism
- The Future of Humanitarian Design and e-flux Architecture Editorial
